African Studies in the West Indies

Alan Cobley
Senior Lecturer in African History
Dean, Faculty of Humanities
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus
Barbados

25 February 2001

From the eighteenth century onwards a handful of the millions of Africans who had been caught up in the Transatlantic slave trade and transported to the Americas began to set down their experiences of enslavement, and of the African societies they had left behind. The writings of individuals such as James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano were among the first to attempt to present the western world with a view of the African continent that was not coloured by racial prejudice or avarice. Thus it can be argued that the origins of the modern discipline of African Studies lie in the black Atlantic world. From that time on, products of the African diaspora from the Caribbean have played a key role in developing both a scholarly understanding and a politicised consciousness of the African continent and its peoples. In the hundred years from the mid-nineteenth century up to mid-twentieth century they included, to name but a few, Edward Wilmot Blyden (Danish West Indies), Henry Sylvester Williams (Trinidad), Marcus Garvey (Jamaica), C.L.R.James (Trinidad), George Padmore (Trinidad), Franz Fanon (Martinique) and Aime; Cesaire (Martinque). Issues of black identity, culture and identification with the African 'motherland' were central to the work of all of these figures.

In 1965 Rodney was followed from UWI to SOAS by two other young graduates, Alvin Thompson and Winston McGowan. Both returned to the Caribbean to take up teaching posts at the University of Guyana (in 1969 and 1970 respectively). In 1972 Thompson moved to the Cave Hill Campus of the UWI in Barbados, where he was largely responsible for the development for the undergraduate programme in African history. Building on these foundations, by the end of the 1980s the History Department at Cave Hill included three members with expertise in African History.

Nothing has been said in this brief review so far about the state of African Studies in the non-Anglophone Caribbean. This is partly due to a lack of information on my part, but also reflects what appears to be a relative under-development of African Studies in the French and Spanish-speaking parts of the region. Currently, for example, there are no courses in African History offered at the University of Puerto Rico or at the Universite des Antilles et de la Guyane (in Martinique). Cuba, of course, with its history of direct linkages with African states since the Revolution is an outstanding exception to this relative dearth of interest, and could be the subject of an article in its own right.

While the battle to develop African Studies as an academic discipline was continuing within the walls of academe in the Anglophone Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s, popular sentiment on African issues focused primarily on the dramatic struggle against apartheid in South Africa. West Indians were drawn directly into this issue by the international controversy over sanctions, and especially by the question of a cricketing boycott of South Africa. Radical Pan-Africanists throughout the West Indies rallied around their support for a boycott, and waged a vocal campaign in support of sanctions. As a spin off from this campaign, efforts continued to educate the public in the Caribbean about the region's African heritage, and to promote a sense of connection with the African continent. These efforts ranged from lecture series and workshops to cultural events. In the 1990s, after the end of the apartheid era, interest in Africa was sustained in the Caribbean through continuing campaigns by people of African descent to bolster a sense of African identity and to promote African advancement in the face of a global environment that was perceived to be hostile to these goals. In Barbados, for example, the Government has recently established a Pan African Affairs Commission, with a brief to develop practical links with the African continent and educate the Barbadian public about its African heritage. There are also moves afoot in Barbados to develop African Studies in Schools. These wider efforts at consciousness raising have ensured that African Studies options at UWI remain popular among students.

The controversies over African Studies in the West Indies have had at least one lasting effect. It is now widely accepted both at the academic and the popular levels in Caribbean society that an interest in, and study of, aspects of African culture must be embedded in any credible programme of Caribbean Studies. This was not generally so in the 1960s or 1970s. This means that the study of Caribbean literature or Caribbean linguistics, for example, can scarcely proceed without reference to African influences. The result is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify a clear dividing line between African and Caribbean Studies; indeed, many African-Caribbean scholars would probably deny that such a dividing line exists. This convergence is also reflected in the growing interest among Caribbean scholars in the hybrid discipline of 'Diaspora Studies'.